Red Light Districts

Panhandlers and the Cardboard Shuffle

On my route to my older kids’ school, I pass through some pretty unattractive scenery; the landfill, the garbage truck place, and an incredibly smelly pile of dirt. But none are as sad as the cardboard crew on the corner.

For the past three years, I’ve been driving past this corner, which sits just inside the city limits at a busy and drab intersection. A rotating cast of sun-beaten and ostensibly homeless people take shifts on the center median, while a colleague works the grassy side of the road. They smile and wave, pace and turn, timing their walk with the light; their cardboard signs make their various emotional appeals.

Nobody wants to catch the red light at this intersection. Panhandlers always hover uncomfortably by the first few cars in the line. A few will give money, but most, like me, will not; we’re afraid the money will only be spent on drugs.

I normally stare ahead, deaf and blind, and ignore their predictable strolling; but one day last year, I finally decided to engage. An older woman, tanned, and blessed with kind blue eyes, had been a regular at this corner for some time. She always wore long jean shorts and a big tee shirt, not the typical ragged look of urban homelessness. Regardless of her story—which was likely made up—I pitied this woman’s shamefully spent golden years.

So stuck at the long light one day, I motioned through my window as she began her red light routine. I asked her why she was out there so much and where she slept. She said “they” try to find hotel rooms most nights; I assume she shacked up with the older man who held a sign nearby. Standing at my window for the long red light, she unloaded her sad, and questionable, cardboard story.

Her history was told in the simple warmth of her southern drawl. She was from Alabama and had been a foster mom, but her kids had supposedly been taken away unjustly. Somehow she found her way to Atlanta—but those details were omitted, in keeping with the timing of the light cycle. Her Alabama accent made her blue-eyed warmth convincing; I hardly cared whether her tale was even true.

Perhaps she was telling the truth about a broken and tragic life. Maybe she’s a huckster, good at acting; in the moments of passing in a car, it’s hard to tell. I told her I would bring her food next time but had nothing at the moment; she offered a gracious “that’s alright, hun,” and a warm “God bless.” With the light now green, I waved and drove away.

Hours later, it was time to go pick up my kids, and I was determined to deliver on my earlier promise. Passing by during a green light, I quickly handed her a grocery bag with a homemade sandwich, a drink, and a little note. On my return, the bag sat untouched, now laying on the grassy edge at the other side of the road. Maybe later on she would be hungry.

After watching her stand there holding her sign on blazing summer days, I wondered at the toll it must take on her face. She had clothes for each season, but never a hat for the sun. I gave her one, hoping perhaps it would shield her aging eyes; but the next day, still in the sun, she stood there hatless. When I asked her why, she said the wind had blown it away.

Some days she was slumped over under a tree on the side of the road, with her male friend covering her beat in the usual spot. I wondered at the sight of her roadside nap. Was she wasting her life in cheap hotels, on drugs, standing in brutal heat to afford them? Maybe she wasn’t a con artist living in a different part of town. Do con artists sleep in the exhaust of busy roads, slumped over under trees?

Eventually we stopped seeing her, and another crew took over; but a few months later, my daughter saw her outside Chick-fil-A. She stood in the parking lot enduring the ire of an intoxicated and agitated man. I haven’t seen her at the corner since, but I guess she’s still around, with this squabbling man, and panhandling away elsewhere.

Today was another day to be stopped at the light. My windows were down—it was beautiful out—but with a cardboard sign on my left, I stared at the light.

Next to my window, a bearded panhandler lingered, a smiling and gesturing country-looking man. He kept making an attention-getting sound, but I stared resolutely ahead. Finally, I turned my head because I could bear his theatrics no more. He was pointing with a smile at my carpool tag; it’s a number hanging from my rearview mirror.

“Ma’am, you know what that number is?”

He tried his best to engage, but I’m always careful about such men. I turned my face back towards the light with a civil but purposely uninviting “no”. In his down-and-out drawl, with the hiss of missing teeth, he told me that it was the number of the best engine Chevy ever made. Having received this engine trivia, and with the light now green, I drove away somewhat amused, and he shuffled on.

The cardboard-carrying man may have told a bunch of lies, and for all I know the sun-beaten woman did, too. He’s an image bearer—an unlikely one, and today, he bore a tiny shimmer—a look back to happier days with something we surprisingly shared.

Today, for a moment, in the timing of the light, the man with the cardboard sign had told a truth. When I got home, I looked it up, knowing nothing of Chevy engines, but sure enough, it was a V-8 made back in his prime. He probably liked Corvettes or El Caminos then, but now he’s living in fumes from cars like mine.